"...God Protect Us From Those Who Fell For...The Leader of the Pack...."

Two kinds of people in the world, the old saying goes.

Leaders.

And followers.


16 year old Destinee Mangum has publicly thanked the three strangers who intervened on a Portland light rail after a man hurled anti-Muslim slurs at her and her friend who was wearing a hijab.

Two of the men were killed. One is in the hospital after the suspect, identified as Jeremy Joseph Christian, 35, stabbed the three victims.

"I just want to say thank you to the people who put their life on the line for me," Mangum said, "Because they didn't even know me and they lost their lives because of me and my friend and the way we look."

On Friday afternoon, Mangum and her friend were riding the MAX light rail when the suspect allegedly targeted them. He yelled at Mangum, who is not Muslim, and her friend, using what police described as "hate speech toward a variety of ethnicities and religions."

"He told us to go back to Saudi Arabia and he told us we shouldn't be here, to get out of his country," Mangum said "He was just telling us that we basically weren't anything and that we should just kill ourselves."

Frightened by his outburst, the pair moved away to the back of the train. 

Then a stranger intervened, telling the man that he "can't disrespect these young ladies like that."

"Then they just all started arguing," Mangum said. 

By the time the light rail pulled into the next station, Mangum and her friends were ready to leave.

"Me and my friend were going to get off the MAX and then we turned around while they were fighting and he just started stabbing people," she said. 

"It was just blood everywhere and we just started running for our lives." 

Several passengers chased after the suspect and called 911, directing officers to his whereabouts, according to local media. 

The men who had intervened were viciously attacked, police said.

Ricky John Best, 53, of Happy Valley, died at the scene. The military veteran worked as a technician for the city of Portland and gravitated towards public service. 

Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23, of Portland, died at the hospital. He had graduated from Portland's Reed College with a degree in economics last year and had just begun his career working at an environmental consulting agency.

The third victim, Micah Fletcher, 21, is being treated at a hospital with serious injuries. A GoFundMe account to pay for his medical bills showed a picture of him on a hospital bed with the visible neck wound that read: "Thank you for all the support." 

 

Christian was charged with two counts of aggravated murder and one count of attempted murder, all felonies. The aggravated murder charge has the death penalty as a possible sentence. 

He also was charged with misdemeanors: two counts of second-degree intimidation and a count of being a felon in possession of a restricted weapon, police said.

Police said detectives are looking at Christian's background, "including the information publicly available about the suspect's extremist ideology."

Videos have surfaced showing Christian at various events shouting at people, at one point saying the N-word, as police officers separated him from others.

 

Authorities are trying to determine whether Christian will be charged with federal hate crimes.

In addition to the videos showing the killer at various events, pictures of past tweets have surfaced showing him at one particular rally, American flag draped around his neck, defiantly extending one arm in a Nazi salute, his other hand carrying a baseball bat, the caption of the tweet remarking how he is screaming racial and religious epithets.

It will come as no great shock that the rally he was attending was in support of Trump.

Let's save ourselves some time.

And skip the very exhausting and, by now, very cliche and, ultimately, futile debate/argument/outright battle over whether or not Donald Trump is a reprehensible human being.

Let's just spend a few moments pondering concepts.

In particular, the concept of leadership.

The dictionary is scholastically direct but emotionless in its definition.

"...the action of leading a group of people or organization.."

For my money, defining leadership is accomplished by following the example set in 1964 by Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart who, when called upon to define obscenity, remarked that he couldn't define it, per se' but, "I know it when I see it."

Leadership, it its most authentic form, is very much like that.

Perhaps we cannot define it, per se', but we know it when we see it.

Meanwhile, there are the words of Voltaire to consider.

Or Spiderman's Uncle Ben, depending on your particular source for wisdom encrusted pearls.

"With great power...comes great responsibility."

When we think of leadership, we tend to lean toward the majestic, as opposed to malevolent, practitioners.

Moses, who, with a little assist from the director of locusts and flaming hailstones, convinced Pharaoh to let his people go.

Gandhi, hunger striking his way to inspiring an entire nation to put an end to generations of being ruled by another nation.

Franklin Roosevelt, who calmed fears by defining fear itself and delivered America out of a devastating depression.

You can practically hear the stirring John Williams soundtrack playing in the background.

Meanwhile, as the less erudite and articulate among us might chime in, "the list of leaders ain't all roses and daffodils, ya know?"

Ivan the Terrible.

Attila the Hun.

Various Kim Jongs of one Un or another.

Castro.

Stalin.

Hitler.

And, of course, the boo hiss villain who, even dead, still ranks right up there at the top of the charts these days.

Osama Bin Laden.

Old joke goes like this. Many people say that everything happens for a reason. 

No one ever says it's always a good reason.

Leadership is like that.

One can be led to safety, paradise or even just a place to get the best burgers in town.

One can also be led to rack and ruin.

Trump has made it clear, from the outset of his entry into the political portion of what will  be his someday self glorifying, surely ghostwritten autobiography, that his style of leadership is light on the inspiring and concrete block heavy on the inciting. Little or no effort put into calming a nation's concerns and daily, if not hourly, tappings into his faithful's fears, fears themselves, never wasting time on excessive, let alone eloquent, oratory when 140 characters or less will get the demagoguery done.

In a slapstick comedy romp or a even a weekly satirical Saturday night show, this style of statesmanship would be a literal mother lode of material.

Come to think of it, it is a literal mother lode of material.

But our day to day lives aren't slapstick comedy romps. And our hopes and dreams and urgent desires to find ways to keep family and friends safe, and alive, in a world where hate and violence and venom and, yes, insanity are in much too abundant supply are not the stuff of satirical Saturday night shows.

And while Trump is on record, via audio, via video, via printed interview, via thousands of hours of thousands of public pronouncements as declaring Islam an enemy and, as a result, even if only inadvertently owing to his ineptness and complete lack of ability, stirring the pot of passions and poison and predispositions to act out the rages within, he has yet, at this writing, to offer a single public utterance on the savage attacks on, or murders of, Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, Ricky John Best and Micah Fletcher.

There are millions of people in this world who woke up on this Memorial Day Monday still appalled beyond measure at what happened in Portland on Friday.

There are, likely, millions of people in this world still appalled that one particular leader has had nothing to say.

But there are, at least, thousands of people who woke up in America on this Monday who believe in their leader and what he represents and what he has said.

And what he has not said.

Two kinds of people in this world.

Leaders and followers.

And that's the problem.

(ED.Note: since the publishing of this piece earlier today, Trump has tweeted the following:
"the violent attacks in Portland on Friday are unacceptable. The victims were standing up to hate and intolerance. Our prayers are w/them"

Hate and intolerance.

As in "found throughout the frenzied crowds last year at Trump rallies from coast to coast")